Tuesday, August 29, 2006
And They Want Me To Teach 14 Year Olds Trigonometry
If you've read my blog in the past or if I know you, then you know that I've been trying to sell my dad's house for almost 2 years now with essentially little success. Well after all the downs and downs (very few ups), today we finally sold the house to someone and it's no longer hanging over my head. So now I have roughly three weeks of nothing hanging over my head until we have the baby and then that can hang over my head for the next 18 years. I'm going to live it up in these three weeks, trust me.
The reason I'm writing, though, is to express my frustration at morons who have managed to thrive in life. The short version of the story (usually I go for the long version, I know, but I'll do my best to condense) is that I have been paying the taxes and other various fees on the house with the plan that the portion that my sister owed would come off the top when we sold the house. The plan was pretty simple and my lawyer said it would be no problem. The problem is that both my lawyer and the buyers' lawyer were unable to solve a simple word problem and ended up giving both me and my sister checks for the wrong amount of money.
If you've never been to a closing bascially all the work is done beforehand by the lawyers and you go and sit at a table and sign papers that they put in front of you. Then they give you a check and you leave. It's a pretty passive endeavor for both the buyer and seller. So I know it's my fault for assuming that two lawyers were capable of doing math and I actually had a feeling that they had done it wrong and didn't say anything because I hadn't actually looked at any of the numbers until I walked out, but I'm really just enormously disappointed in America as a whole after this botched turn of events. Now I have to rely on my sister to send me a check for the difference (A significant amount of money) and explain to her that the two lawyers just did the math wrong.
Here's what they did (with the numbers changed). Let's say after all the fees and everything my sister and I grossed $20,000 for the house, which would leave $10,000 for each of us. Let's say that my sister owed me $3,000. The lawyer then said, "Ok, I'll write the smaller check so that it's $3,000 less than the larger check," and so wrote one check for $8,500 and the other for $11,500. Motherfucking whore. All she did was split the amount she owed me in half because the lady couldn't see the two different pieces separately. What needed to happen was that she should have said, "Ok the sister has $10,000 and she owes $3,000 so she'll get $7,000. The brother has $10,000 and is owed $3,000 more so he'll get $13,000." The checks should differ by twice the amount owed, once for the plus and once for the minus.
My point is that two days before I have to go back to work teaching abstract math to 14 year olds I have to deal with not one, but two professionals who are both not only lawyers, so presumably intelligent, but real estate lawyers who presumably deal with money and figures on a regular basis, who can't solve a real life problem involving division by 2 and then subtraction. Fuck me.
The reason I'm writing, though, is to express my frustration at morons who have managed to thrive in life. The short version of the story (usually I go for the long version, I know, but I'll do my best to condense) is that I have been paying the taxes and other various fees on the house with the plan that the portion that my sister owed would come off the top when we sold the house. The plan was pretty simple and my lawyer said it would be no problem. The problem is that both my lawyer and the buyers' lawyer were unable to solve a simple word problem and ended up giving both me and my sister checks for the wrong amount of money.
If you've never been to a closing bascially all the work is done beforehand by the lawyers and you go and sit at a table and sign papers that they put in front of you. Then they give you a check and you leave. It's a pretty passive endeavor for both the buyer and seller. So I know it's my fault for assuming that two lawyers were capable of doing math and I actually had a feeling that they had done it wrong and didn't say anything because I hadn't actually looked at any of the numbers until I walked out, but I'm really just enormously disappointed in America as a whole after this botched turn of events. Now I have to rely on my sister to send me a check for the difference (A significant amount of money) and explain to her that the two lawyers just did the math wrong.
Here's what they did (with the numbers changed). Let's say after all the fees and everything my sister and I grossed $20,000 for the house, which would leave $10,000 for each of us. Let's say that my sister owed me $3,000. The lawyer then said, "Ok, I'll write the smaller check so that it's $3,000 less than the larger check," and so wrote one check for $8,500 and the other for $11,500. Motherfucking whore. All she did was split the amount she owed me in half because the lady couldn't see the two different pieces separately. What needed to happen was that she should have said, "Ok the sister has $10,000 and she owes $3,000 so she'll get $7,000. The brother has $10,000 and is owed $3,000 more so he'll get $13,000." The checks should differ by twice the amount owed, once for the plus and once for the minus.
My point is that two days before I have to go back to work teaching abstract math to 14 year olds I have to deal with not one, but two professionals who are both not only lawyers, so presumably intelligent, but real estate lawyers who presumably deal with money and figures on a regular basis, who can't solve a real life problem involving division by 2 and then subtraction. Fuck me.
# posted by ChuckJerry : 8/29/2006 06:27:00 PM
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That's not necessarily true. When Jerry's reached the end of being on a losing basketball team he becomes Mr. Hyde.
But anyway, I understand your frustration. I've been in countless meetings with other people in the educational field (even other math teachers, sometimes!) who ask me questions that I'm surprised that even if they can't figure out how to solve, that these questions haven't been dealt with already. For instance, when I show guidance counselors and child study team members how you can figure out what a child needs to get on their final exam or 4th marking period to pass for the year without doing any complicated math, you'd think I just proved the theory of general relativity.
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But anyway, I understand your frustration. I've been in countless meetings with other people in the educational field (even other math teachers, sometimes!) who ask me questions that I'm surprised that even if they can't figure out how to solve, that these questions haven't been dealt with already. For instance, when I show guidance counselors and child study team members how you can figure out what a child needs to get on their final exam or 4th marking period to pass for the year without doing any complicated math, you'd think I just proved the theory of general relativity.
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